Ren­o­va­tion work at Roland Gar­ros re­ceives go-ahead

The planned ren­o­va­tion of Roland Gar­ros, the home of the French Open, can fi­nally be­gin af­ter France’s high­est administrative ju­ris­dic­tion gave its goa­head to the project. The Con­seil d’Etat said in a state­ment yes­ter­day that it had over­turned a court de­ci­sion that had put the whole project on hold. En­vi­ron­men­tal groups op­pos­ing the ex­ten­sion claimed the con­struc­tion of a new 5,000-seat court in the Ser­res d’Au­teuil botan­i­cal gar­den would harm the veg­e­ta­tion. The botan­i­cal gar­den’s 19th cen­tury green­houses, a few hun­dred me­tres (yards) from cen­tre court, host a large va­ri­ety of trop­i­cal and lo­cal flow­ers. As part of the re­fur­bish­ment work, the French ten­nis fed­er­a­tion is plan­ning to build a roof over cen­tre court by 2020. Roland Gar­ros is the small­est of the four Grand Slam venues. Plans call for an ex­ten­sion of the site from 21 acres (8.5 hectares) to about 34 acres (13.5 hectares).